Botany in Greece

The two treatises by Theophrastus of Eresos, Enquiry into Plants and On the Causes of Plants , can be considered unique in terms of ancient botany: they are the first writings we know of that are entirely devoted to the study of plants and the phenomena associated with them, and there is nothing in the written record that is comparable to this subject before or after this period. The most important and fundamental difference, however, is identified in themodes of plant generation: nature and human skill and contrivance, as with Aristotle and Theophrastus. As a whole, with a continuation between the first and second books, and leaving aside aspects of empirical dispersion, the work is structured around a number of key themes: plant animation, plant conformation, plant constitution and nutrition, plants and external nature, and abnormal and unusual plants.